


the confines of fear

by prydon



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst With A Bittersweet Ending, Brain screw-ery, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Peter Nureyev Needs a Hug, Really really badly, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27635918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prydon/pseuds/prydon
Summary: There’s no love in the face that is looking at him now, no indication that the man Juno is pointing a gun at ever meant anything to him at all. That’s what hurts worst of all, really. This isn’t Juno turning on him, because he was never on his side in the first place. He’s always known what Nureyev was deep down, and he’s never been able to love that person. He just pretended to.Nureyev closes his eyes.--Or: Shady Dark Matters torture technology forces Nureyev to live through a worst case scenario.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 22
Kudos: 112





	the confines of fear

**Author's Note:**

> Oh this fic is mean. The entire purpose of this fic is to be mean. But I swear there's some sweet hurt/comfort in there too!!
> 
> Really wanted to finish at least one of my WIPs and get it out before the new ep potentially retcons all of them haha, so here's this one.
> 
> Title from "Fear" by Ben Howard.
> 
> CWs:  
> \- Brain,, manipulation??  
> \- Kidnapping/incarceration  
> \- Torture but, like, the mental kind not the physical kind  
> \- Minor injury  
> \- Nureyev typical internalized ageism/self doubt/morality crises  
> \- Brief suicidal ideation
> 
> More CWs in the end notes for things I thought some readers might not want spoiled.

Everything is muffled and blurry, as though Nureyev is trapped behind a particularly thick wall of glass.

He can hear people talking, but their voices aren’t familiar, and he can’t make out their words.

He has a faint memory of being on a job, running alongside Jet as they made their way into the Dark Matters research facility, and then….

A stumble. A hand over his mouth, and a tranquilizer in his arm. A razor against his scalp, and now…something cold and metal, being pressed above his temples. More talking, and a bright light shining in his face. Whispers about a man without a name, someone saying, _“You’ll talk.”_

_“When we’re through with you, you’ll talk.”_

He wants to retort, but it is as though his mouth is wired shut. The world tilts around him, and then suddenly there isn’t a world anymore, just a black much darker and emptier than even the backs of his eyelids, and then-

When Nureyev next opens his eyes, he’s in a shadowy hallway.

It’s familiar: he’s certain he knows this hallway, and has walked it hundreds of times before. Nonetheless, he is struck with a sense of _jamais vu._ He knows the hallway, but something about it is different. He knows the quiet hum in his ears to be the sound of the Carte Blanche’s engines, but they sound different too. Wrong, somehow, like a note being played on an instrument that’s slightly out of tune.

His feet are taking him somewhere with a purpose, but he isn’t certain where. They know better than he does, though, so he allows them to. It wouldn’t be the first time his mind clocked out of a situation, only for his instincts to take over. He’s always relied on them to steer him right in the past.

As he walks, he passes a large mirror hanging on the wall. He comes to a halt, confused. That definitely wasn’t there before. The only mirrors aboard the Carte Blanche are the ones in the bathrooms and in his personal vanity. He certainly would have noticed if there was one right in the main hall like this. He studies it, confused.

The man that stares back at him in the mirror is unmistakably Peter Nureyev, but he’s different, too. Has his hair always been that gray? Have the lines under his eyes and around his mouth always been so prominent, so deeply etched into his sallow skin? Has he always looked so weak, so hunched, so… _old?_ Anyone who saw the man in the mirror would assume he was in his mid-fifties, not late thirties.

Yet Nureyev knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man is him, and that this is how he looks.

He shudders and pushes the thought aside. He can worry about that later; right now he has a job to do.

_A job to do._

Right, he has a mission to complete, one that’s been hanging over his head for months. The day has finally come, and he has to get to the safe that holds the artifacts and leave the ship before anyone wakes up and notices his absence.

He makes his way to it, a route he’s practiced a hundred times before under the guise of doing rounds of the entire ship. He figured out the code weeks ago- only Buddy knows it, but he was able to use one of his kits to surmise which buttons on its number pad have been pressed most often, write out all the possible combinations, and then slowly try each of them out. He’d cross off twenty a night, every night, entering them at top speed while everyone was asleep until he finally reached the right one.

5724\. He types it in. A simple enough code, but then, it’s only meant to be a last resort. Buddy surely didn’t expect the enemy she was hiding the items from to be one who already lives and works on the ship.

_Enemy._

He ignores the way the word makes him shiver. He doesn’t want to think of it like that, of him as their enemy. Some childish, naïve part of him wants to believe that they won’t hate him for this. That they’ll somehow understand why he had to do it even without being given the knowledge necessary to.

The safe door swings open. He has the Key in his head, of course, but there’s the Blade, the Book, and…

The Map is gone.

The Map _can’t_ be gone.

He pulls the other objects out, searching the safe frantically as though he could somehow be missing something in its simple, two by two interior. He isn’t, though. The Map isn’t particularly small, and he knows perfectly well what it looks like. It isn’t there.

Which means…

He doesn’t want to think about what it means. Doesn’t want to face the thought of what will surely happen if he shows up two months late with an incomplete payment. He can’t, right now. He has to focus.

He gathers the remaining two objects in his arms, forcing himself to ignore the way his hands are shaking and his face is sweating. It won’t be enough, but he needs to get out of here. He can’t stay by the safe for a moment longer. He closes it hurriedly, then turns to make his escape and-

Trips.

He stumbles over a groove in the floor and goes sprawling to the ground with a loud crash and all the grace of a newborn giraffe. Whatever skills in stealth he’d thought he’d mastered over the decades have apparently completely fled him now, leaving him worthless. He’s been able to slip through crowds silent and unnoticed since he was a child, but even that ability is apparently something he is no longer privy too.

He stays on the cold floor for a moment, languishing in his embarrassment and disgust with himself, before beginning to drag himself to his feet, but then-

Cool metal is pressed against his forehead.

He doesn’t need to look to know that it’s the muzzle of a blaster. It isn’t the first time in his life that he’s been held at gunpoint.

It is the first time he’s been held at gunpoint by Juno Steel, however.

“Christ. I knew you were pathetic, but I thought you’d at least be a little more subtle when you finally went through with it.”

Nureyev stares up at Juno, his head spinning. He’s been caught red handed, he realizes dully. The worst case scenario has happened. He’s imagined this before, of course: tortured himself by picturing the look of hurt and betrayal on Juno’s face, the tears and the shouting.

There is none of that now, though. Juno doesn’t look upset, even. His expression is neutral as he holds a blaster to his boyfriend’s head. Maybe even a little amused.

“I mean, _really?_ Look at you,” Juno continues. “Some master thief you are.”

“J-Juno, I’m so sorry. I never wanted to do any of this. At first, yes, I only joined this crew with the intention of using it as a means to an end, but now…I care about you. All of you. I do, I just…I have to take them. We already have the Cure Mother, so it’s not as though-”

“Fuck, spare me the sob story, will you? I don’t care. I’ve been waiting for this to happen, anyway. I’ve expected it from day one. I always knew someone like you wouldn’t join up with a gang like this if you didn’t have ulterior motives. I am a detective, you know. I’m not an idiot.”

Nureyev is frozen, struggling to process the words coming out of Juno’s mouth. _He knew all along._ That doesn’t make any sense, though. If he knew, why did he spend so many nights in Nureyev’s quarters? Why had he kissed him, so soft and sweet, like he’d never done a thing wrong in his life? “If you know, why did you…?”

Juno lets out of a bark of laughter. “You didn’t think that was real, did you?”

“I…”

“Really? You really believed I could _love_ you? Come on, Nureyev. I thought you were smarter than this. I walked out of that hotel room for a reason, you know.”

“You…you apologized. You said…”

“Well, yeah, I apologized. It was the easiest way to make you believe I was on your side, so I could catch you when you inevitably pulled something like this. Better the devil you know than you devil you don’t, right?” Juno’s face darkens. “And you are the devil, Peter Nureyev _._ You thought I could watch what you did on New Kinshasa and still love you? That I wouldn’t think you’re a fucking monster? Give me a break. You killed your own father in cold blood.”

“He…wasn’t my father,” Nureyev chokes out. “He lied to me. He was going to kill all those people.”

“He was kind to you. He raised you, taught you everything you knew, saved you from a life of starvation and destitution…He’s the only reason you’re not dead in a gutter somewhere, and that was how you repaid him. I would have done anything to have a parent like him instead of the one that I had- and _I_ didn’t even kill mine.”

Tears are pricking Nureyev’s eyes now. His entire body feels heavy and numb. He knows he should be doing something, trying to figure out a way out from under the blaster to escape, but all he can bring himself to do is stare up at the detective and whisper, “Juno, _please.”_

The look on Juno’s face shifts, but not towards affection or regret like Nureyev might have hoped. No, this is…pity. The kind of pity one might show for an insect writhing on its back before crushing it underfoot to put it out of its misery. “Sorry, Nureyev. What we’ve had this past year was nice, but it didn’t mean anything. You of all people should be familiar with the concept of a _long con_.” He snorts. “Hardly even necessary, though, given how hopeless you are. You really did love me, didn’t you?”

 _I did,_ Nureyev thinks.

_I did._

_I do._

“You gave me your name from the very beginning, even though it was dangerous and stupid thing to do. Even after I betrayed you, you still loved me. You came crawling back as soon as we were on the same ship.” Juno shakes his head. “I guess it’s flattering but…sorry, I don’t want the love of someone like you.”

He cocks the blaster and Nureyev cringes, squeezing his eyes shut. If he looks at Juno any longer, he’s afraid he might shatter.

“That’s the funniest part, isn’t it?” Juno continues. “I’m a criminal now. We’re all criminals, here. I’m not even mad at you about that part. It’d be fine if you were just some two-bit burglar, but even here…there’s no honor among thieves with you, is there? You’re handed a family on a silver fucking platter, and you still can’t help but betray them. Like you betrayed Mag. Like you’ll betray everyone, because at your core you’re a selfish monster who only cares about himself.”

“I didn’t betray Mag. He betrayed me,” Nureyev says, but it comes out sounding like a whimper. Like a pathetic plea by the guilty party already sitting in the electric chair.

“Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.” Juno sighs. “God, this is sad. I don’t think I can handle listening to any more of your whining.”

“Do it, then.”

“What?”

Nureyev opens his eyes again and fixes Juno with as hard a gaze as he can muster. “Kill me. Pull the trigger already. You’re going to do it anyway, so you might as well get it over with.” _I can’t stand to listen to any more of your words, either. Oblivion would be better than this, better than the person I love standing in front of me and saying this._

_If I am incapable of being loved by anyone, even you, then…what’s the point?_

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Juno says softly. He slowly the lowers the blaster, then slips it back into its holster. “No such luck, babe. Sorry.” The pet name Nureyev had come to love sounds sour from his mouth now, like a jeer. A taunt. “It was set to stun, anyway. Some of us don’t go around just murdering everyone we don’t like, you know.”

Any energy that Nureyev had left goes out of him then, like air from a balloon. He crumples onto the floor, dropping the bag with the Blade and the Book. “It doesn’t matter, anyway,” he says weakly. “Even if I escape from here and go to my creditors, I don’t have everything I promised them. I’ll die anyway. You…you have to tell me where the Map is, Juno. You don’t even need it anymore, and if I don’t give it to them, they’ll kill me. Just tell me.”

“Nope. Sorry.”

“You just said-”

“I’m not going to kill you, Nureyev. I didn’t say I’d stop anyone else from doing so. That’s not my problem. Honestly, the universe is better off without people like you in it. Your creditors would be doing us all a favor. Right, guys?”

“Right,” a familiar voice says.

Nureyev blinks in confusion, and then suddenly he’s blinking harder as the room is lit up in bright white light. Now that the light switch has been flipped, he can see four figures standing in the back of the room, watching him.

Jet, Rita, Vespa and Buddy.

Buddy is the one who spoke, her arms crossed and her expression hard. “You know, Pete, when I hired you I truly believed you might be able to turn over a new leaf. Seems I was wrong.”

“Good fucking riddance,” Vespa hisses. “That creep hasn’t fit in from the beginning. I’ve been looking forward to this moment for months.”

Jet nods curtly. “It is for the best. Regardless of the betrayal, his presence on missions was a hindrance more often than not. We do not need him.”

Every word is another knife in Nureyev’s already wound-riddled chest.

He finds his eyes searching for Rita, who is standing by the door in her bright purple nightgown, eating a bag of chips. Through everything, she’s always been kind to him. He knows he deserves what the others are saying, but nonetheless he reaches for her like a lifeline, begging for some small scrap of mercy.

She returns his gaze, eating another chip, then says, “I remember two years ago, when Mistah Steel just disappeared. He called and told me he might be in trouble, and then he was gone for weeks. When he came back he was missing an eye and he was all sad and broken and hurt, and…it took me a little while, but I figured it out. That was you, Mistah Ransom. No…Mistah _Nureyev._ You did that to him.”

“I didn’t…I never wanted him to be hurt,” Nureyev says weakly.

“Yeah, but he was anyway. You haven’t made his life better. You’ve just made it worse,” she says, matter of fact. “I know you ain’t had an easy life, Mistah Nureyev, but neither has Mistah Steel- and look at him right now. He’s doing all this work to recover from the bad stuff he’s been through, meanwhile you’re just sneaking around and betrayin’ folks. It ain’t right. You’re always making things worse.”

She’s right.

They’re all right, of course.

“Very well,” he says quietly. He releases his grip on the bag, letting it fall to the floor, then gets to his feet. “I’ll go to them empty-handed, and…they’ll kill me.”

“Oh, don’t act so self-pitying,” Vespa says. “You could have explained yourself at any time. You could have just not gotten into debt in the first place. All of this is your fault, so you haven’t earned the right to feel bad for yourself.”

“I don’t, I promise you. I know this is the price I have to pay.”

She groans. “It’s so unsatisfying, though! If we let you go, how do we know you’re not going to just run away and hide before finding somebody else to fuck over?”

“Vespa has a point,” Jet says. “It may be unwise to allow the thief to leave.”

Suddenly another fear, even deeper than fear for his own life, pierces Nureyev’s heart. “You can’t keep me here,” he says frantically.

“We are very capable of doing so, in fact,” Buddy says. “You’ll recall that we do have a brig.”

“N-no, I mean…my debts. My time is up. If I don’t leave, they’ll come here to find me. They’ll kill all of you to get to me.”

His eyes turn to Juno, and even after everything that just happened, he can’t bear the thought of that lady dying.

The galaxy can continue without Peter Nureyev, but it can’t continue without Juno Steel. It shouldn’t. Nureyev can’t bear to even imagine a universe without Juno Steel in it.

“Please,” he says. “I promise I won’t run from my fate. I-I’ll leave the items here, and go to them. Either I’m able to renegotiate or they kill me, but either way you never have to see me again.”

“Not gonna happen, Nureyev,” Vespa sneers. “We know who you are, now. We know what you’re capable of. I’m not risking you terrorizing anybody else.”

Jet looks to Buddy, who is currently tapping her chin and wearing a contemplative expression. “Buddy? As captain, what do you suggest as our next course of action?”

She sighs. “We certainly can’t allow him to leave, but it’s too dangerous to let him stay here, either. Bloodshed is never my first choice, but if there are no other options on the table…it may be in our best interest to kill him.”

Her tone is perfectly matter of fact, the same one that she uses when announcing what chores have to be done during a family meeting.

“Juno, I know it isn’t an ideal situation, but…you’re the one who already has their weapon on them,” she continues.

Juno looks towards Nureyev, weighing his blaster in his hand. “Fine. I try to avoid killing people if I can help it, but what’s one less monster in the world, anyway?”

Nureyev can only stay on the floor, stock still as the blaster is raised to his forehead a second time.

“Juno…” he whispers.

“It’s a mercy, really,” Juno says. “Like putting down a horse with a broken leg.”

There’s no love in the face that is looking at him now, no indication that the man Juno is pointing a gun at ever meant anything to him at all. That’s what hurts worst of all, really. This isn’t Juno turning on him, because he was never on his side in the first place. He’s always known what Nureyev was deep down, and he’s never been able to love that person. He just pretended to.

Nureyev closes his eyes.

When he opens them again, everything is still dark. He blinks several times, to make sure his eyes really are open and he really is awake. Eventually his vision clears enough to make out the shadowy shape of a small, dark room.

He can feel strong hands on his shoulders, shaking him. A familiar voice is speaking, but he can’t make out any words, until-

“Ransom? Ransom! Come back to me, baby, please.”

His vision finally clears enough to make out a worried face in front of him. A worried face with a single dark eye, warm brown skin, and a scar across the nose.

“Can you hear me? I’m right here. We’re getting you out. You’re safe now.”

Nureyev realizes with a start that his hands are bound to the arms of the chair that he’s sitting in. When he pulls against the restraints his wrists sear with pain, and he looks down to discover that the skin around them is already rubbed red and bleeding.

 _“Shh sh sh_. Stop struggling. You’re hurting yourself. I’ve got the key right here.”

With a quiet click, he’s free.

He flexes his wrists. They’re not the only part of him that’s hurting: his back and every one of his limbs are sore, too, like he’s been stuck in this hard metal chair for days. Maybe he has been. His stomach is aching with hunger, his lips cracked and mouth dry. He can barely think, let alone understand where he is or why.

“Come on, baby. We’ve got to get out of here.”

He looks up at the one-eyed face that is saying such gentle things to him again, and suddenly the memories flood back to him.

A blaster to his head.

That same eye fixed on him with disgust and grim determination.

_“Like putting down a horse with a broken leg.”_

A calloused hand reaches towards him and Nureyev scrambles out of the chair to avoid it, backing away. There’s nowhere to run. This person is standing between him and the only exit. He keeps backing up anyway, until he’s pressed into the far corner of the room. He stays there, shivering in his torn and dirty clothes, knowing it’s useless to hide but unable to do anything else.

“Fuck. I’m in the room, Captain, but…” The person is speaking into his comms now. “I…he won’t let me touch him.”

“We need to leave now, Juno,” a crackling voice responds.

“I know. I know.” The person- _Juno_ \- looks up at him again, his face a mask of pain and desperation. “Ransom, I know you’re scared, but we have to go. Dark Matters is going to send reinforcements soon.”

Nureyev shakes his head. He doesn’t know what Juno intends to do with him, whether he’s going to try to shoot him again or hand him over to his creditors, but either way he can’t go quietly. No matter how fruitless it is, there is a desperate part of him that still refuses to die without a fight.

Juno takes a step towards him, and he flattens himself even further against the wall, as if doing so will somehow turn him invisible. Another step. Juno’s blaster is on his hip, where he can reach it at any moment. Nureyev could try to slip past him and run for the door, but his legs are weak and trembling, and he doubts he would make it there before Juno got a shot in.

“Please,” he manages to say, his voice rough from disuse. “Please, don’t.”

An expression Nureyev doesn’t understand crosses Juno’s face. “Ransom… _Nureyev,_ it’s me. It’s Juno.”

He’s so close now. Striking distance, if Nureyev had a knife- but of course he doesn’t have one. He has nothing to protect him as the love of his life approaches to kill him. Perhaps that’s for the best, after all. He should let it happen. He _wants_ to let it happen.

His body, still wired for survival after all these years, apparently has other plans. The second Juno reaches for him again, Nureyev’s cracked acrylic nails are raking across his skin. Juno lets out a cry of pain and stumbles back, giving Nureyev the perfect opportunity to slip past him and run for the door.

“Nureyev, wait!” Juno yells after him.

He’s through the door and out in the hallway now, sprinting as fast as he can. ‘As fast as he can’ isn’t very fast, however, and his legs feel like jelly beneath him. There’s a headache pounding behind his eyes now, too, every part of his body screaming at him to stop and every part of his brain screaming _You can’t stop, if you stop you’ll die-_

Then his legs makes the decision for him, by way of collapsing underneath him.

He slams into the hard metal ground, and that’s when he knows the game is lost for good. All his years of running and surviving are over.

Juno is kneeling over him now. He can see streaks of red on the lady’s arm where his nails pierced his skin. “God, please stop running!”

Juno’s blaster is drawn. Nureyev flinches when he notices it, sucking in his breath. They’re quick, at least, blaster shots. They’re painless if you know where to hit. With all his years as a sharpshooter, there’s no way Juno doesn’t know where to hit.

“Juno,” he rasps with what’s left of his breath.

“Yeah, baby. It’s me. I’m here.”

“Make it…quick. Please, Juno. Just get it over with.”

It’s a miracle he’s survived this long, but if he’s going to die…Well, maybe he’s glad it’ll be by Juno Steel’s hand. He certainly wouldn’t rather die by anyone else’s. It feels right, almost. Like penance.

Juno is staring at him now, but the expression on his face doesn’t make any sense. He doesn’t look angry, or resolved, or any of the ways he looked after discovering Nureyev’s betrayal. He looks horrified.

Even after everything, even through his confusion and fear, Nureyev still wants to kiss that look off of his face.

“Nureyev…what are you saying?”

Juno barely gets the words out before the others arrive, and that’s when Nureyev knows it’s over. Even if Juno could find it in himself somewhere to spare Nureyev, they won’t. They’ve never liked him, never trusted him. Vespa has been looking for an excuse to kill him for months, and now she has one. This is it.

At least once he’s dead they’ll be safe. At least a dead body has no debts to pay.

There are voices all around him, then, but none of the things they’re saying make any sense.

_“Shit, we need to get him to the infirmary as quickly as possible.”_

_“The electrodes are still attached to his head…”_

_“Rita has hacked the system. He should be out of the simulation now.”_

_“That’s right! I got rid of the whole program. Dark Matters ain’t gonna be torturing people like that anymore, not on Rita’s watch.”_

_“He was scared of me. I think he…he thought I was going to hurt him.”_

_“Looks like_ he _managed to hurt_ you _, Steel.”_

_“It’s fine. I’m fine. Just…help him, Vespa. Please.”_

Even if the rest of him has, his body refuses to give up. When Vespa approaches and tries to reach for him, he lashes out, kicking and scratching and yelling.

“Shut up, Ransom,” she hisses. “You’re going to get us all killed.”

“I do not wish to alarm you, Vespa, but the reinforcements have reached the level below us,” Jet’s voice says.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! I’m gonna have to sedate him. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Steel. Either I sedate him or you stun him with your blaster, but somehow we’ve gotta get him out of here. What, you don’t wanna stun him? Thought not. So let me do my fucking job.”

Before Nureyev can react, he feels a needle going into his neck. He fights for one last, desperate moment, and then his vision clouds over and everything is dark once again.

When Nureyev wakes up, he’s alone.

The room is familiar: it’s his own bedroom, in fact, aboard the Carte Blanche. It takes him a moment to process this information. It’s definitely his room, but something’s changed. It’s been cleaned since he last saw it, the entirety of the bed and the floor now visible. He hears something beeping beside him and discovers he’s hooked up to a small monitor and an IV bag.

He cautiously removes both, too hazy to feel anything but numb confusion at his current situation. He slowly drags himself out of bed and to the bathroom. He’s desperately thirsty, his face feels cracked and dry, and all he can think about is how much he wants to shove his head under the faucet of the sink. He does so, letting the water rush over him and into his mouth.

As he straightens up, he catches sight of himself in the mirror.

The person who stares back isn’t the same old, decrepit man he remembers seeing in the hallway mirror, but it isn’t a very pretty sight either. He’s dressed in nothing but a hospital gown, without so much as a spot of makeup. His face is gaunt and sallow, the dark circles under his eyes deeper than he’s ever seen them, and his hair…

He runs a hand over the short fuzz that is all that remains of it. Its been entirely shaved off, revealing circular red marks where something was once attached to his head. He has a vague memory of nodules being put there, and then…

Then waking up in the Carte Blanche, in the middle of stealing the items that lead to the Cure Mother prime.

Except that doesn’t make any sense.

He stumbles back out into his room and finds his comms on the bedside table. Yes: the date his debts are due is still weeks away. They haven’t even stolen the Cure Mother yet. So…why does he remember stealing the items and being caught so vividly? Why can he still feel the metal of Juno’s blaster against his forehead when he closes his eyes?

He collapses onto the bed, feeling nauseous. Nothing makes any sense. Did he imagine it all? Or is this the imagined part, one last pleasant fantasy of normalcy before he’s killed? If this is the fantasy, then why does everything _hurt_ so much?

“…Hey. You’re awake,” Juno’s voice says from the doorway.

He looks up so quickly that a stab of pain runs through his head and he flinches.

Juno holds up his hands, his expression changing from concern to guilt and pain. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“It’s just…my head,” Nureyev shakes himself. “Juno…what happened?”

Juno cautiously steps closer with his hands still raised, like someone trying to approach a stray cat without spooking it. “You were captured by Dark Matters. They…they were trying to break you. Mentally. They’ve got some fucked up new program that forces people into nightmares about their worst fears. I don’t know what you saw in there, Nureyev, but I promise you it wasn’t real. None of it.”

Nureyev blinks several times, struggling to process this information. It makes sense, but…it _felt_ so real. The idea that it might not have been is almost too good to be true. “Oh.”

“Vespa said it’d be better to set you up here than in the infirmary. That it’s more familiar, so you might feel safer. She also told me not to come in here so I didn’t…so you wouldn’t…” Juno laughs wryly. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist checking on you.”

A desperate fear suddenly grips Nureyev. “The…nightmare. Could they...was it recorded?”

_Did they learn my name?_

_Did you see it, and realize what I’m planning?_

Juno shakes his head. “They can still only mess with people’s brains, not see inside them, thank god.”

“Oh. Good.” With that fear abated, Nureyev struggles to register everything else that’s going on. There are bandages wrapped around one of Juno’s arms, he realizes. He squints at them hazily. “You’re hurt.”

“What? Oh, no. No, it’s nothing.”

“What happened?”

“I told you, it’s nothing.”

He’s starting to remember now, though, getting flashes of the Dark Matters facility: he remembers being captured and knocked out, then waking up locked in a chair as his head was shaved and the nodules attached. He remembers Juno freeing him, him backing himself into a corner, and then-

“It was me,” he says softly.

“…You weren’t in your right mind. It’s okay.”

“Juno, I’m-”

“Don’t apologize. I’m not upset with you. I’m upset with those fucking bastards. The way you were talking…I hurt you in the simulation, didn’t I? I tried to kill you.” Nureyev doesn’t want to answer, but his face must give him away, because Juno grits his teeth and says, “Fucking hell. I’m so sorry, Nureyev. That’s…horrible.”

Nureyev chuckles weakly. “Well, if they really wanted me to experience as much pain as possible, it always had to be you, didn’t it?” he says. “If it’s any conciliation…I deserved it. In the simulation, I mean.”

“Nureyev, there isn’t any version of reality in which you’d ever deserve that. Not one. I’m never going to hurt you, all right?”

“You can’t know that.” He’s accepted that it wasn’t real, now, but that fact doesn’t make him feel much better. The globe being gone from the safe, him being caught, everything the crew said and did…that was just a nightmare, but his debts and what he will have to do to rid himself of them still lurks behind him, as real as his own shadow.

“I won’t,” Juno insists. “Baby…where is this coming from? Look, whatever happened in the simulation…whatever you did, it didn’t actually happen.”

“And if it does happen? What then?”

“Nureyev…”

“You can’t know that you won’t ever hate me,” Nureyev says softly. “You can’t, so please don’t try to tell me that.”

“You aren’t even saying what you did in the dream, so of course I can’t-”

“Just…can you promise me one thing, Juno?”

“Anything.”

“You do…love me, right? Now, I mean.”

Juno’s face crumples into a mask of pain and rage. “Those fucking Dark Matters assholes, I’ll kill them-” he cuts himself off and takes a deep breath. “Of course I love you, Nureyev. Please. Please, don’t ever doubt that.”

Nureyev nods shakily. “Okay.”

It’s wrong, he knows, to take comfort in that. He doesn’t deserve it. Really, it’d be best for everyone if that part of the nightmare was true: if Juno didn’t love him, he wouldn’t have to feel any pain when Nureyev ruins everything. He deserves to not feel any pain.

_What’s the point of him loving you now if he’s only going to hate you later?_

It’s a question that’s haunted his mind for months, appearing during every intimate moment he’s had with Juno and tinging the edges of every ounce of happiness he’s felt.

He doesn’t have an answer for it, except that it’s how he’s always survived: by filing away the past and the future to focus on nothing but the present. In the present, Juno loves him. In the present, Juno doesn’t want him dead. In the present, he’s happy.

“…Nureyev?”

He startles, feeling something hot and wet on his cheeks. As if it wasn’t bad enough that his hair is gone and he looks like a wreck, now he’s _crying._ What a miserable affair. “I…I’m all right.”

“Can I touch you?” Juno asks.

Nureyev’s heart aches at the courtesy. “Yes. Please.”

He’s terrified that he will do something awful like inadvertently flinch away, and is deeply relieved to discover that not even his subconscious is still afraid that Juno might hurt him. Instead, he just feels a bone-deep affection as the lady’s arms gently wrap around him and pull him close.

“It wasn’t real,” Juno whispers into his temple like a mantra. “You’re home. You’re safe. None of it was real.”

 _No, it wasn’t,_ Nureyev thinks. _You would never hurt me._

_But what if I hurt you?_

He already has, he remembers, his fingers brushing against the bandages on Juno’s arm. He knows he’s already been forgiven for the scratch marks he left there, but should he have been? Does he really deserve any of Juno’s forgiveness?

And yet despite everything, he’s happy there, in Juno’s arms. He’s happy, for now. He lets his aching body relax and closes his eyes, trying to hold the moment in his mind like a snapshot. He’s spent entire nights memorizing floor plans before, after all, and this is something much more important: the feeling of being loved by Juno Steel. He wants it tattooed to his brain, carved into him like a scar. He wants it to stain his memories like blood on white fabric.

He still wakes up in a cold sweat some nights from dreams about a childhood that ended decades ago. If the bad things can haunt him, why not the good things, too?

Years from now, if he’s even alive then, this is what he wants to remember.

When he woke up in an empty bed on the other side of the galaxy a lifetime ago, he’d spent hours wishing he’d never met Juno at all. It hadn’t seemed worth it, he’d thought. What was the point of all that love, if they couldn’t actually travel the stars together? What was it for?

He knows now, though. Even though it can’t last, even though he will never have forever with Juno Steel, he refuses to regret one second of this. He’d much rather have a happy memory than nothing at all.

“I can practically hear you thinking from here,” Juno mumbles into his scalp. “You wanna turn down the volume a little?”

“I don’t believe I can.”

“Wanna talk about it, then?”

“I’m afraid that I-”

“Can’t do that either. Right.”

“I’m okay, love. Just…relishing my time with you. It’s been quite a week.”

“Mm.” Juno squeezes him lightly. “I promise we won’t let anything like that happen to you again, all right? I…I know what it feels like, to have something fuck with your head. You didn’t deserve that. No one does.”

“Thank you,” Nureyev says softly.

“For what?”

“For…loving me.”

Juno laughs. “That’s not something you have to thank me for, you know. Couldn’t help it if I tried, anyway. You’re just too lovable.”

“Says you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m right, though.”

“Still. Thank you.” Nureyev can feel his body growing heavier, and realizes that whatever pain medication he’s on, he isn’t going to be able to fight the drowsiness it’s causing him much longer.

“…You’re welcome.”

His eyes drift closed again as he says, “And…I’m sorry.”

“Baby, I already told you, you don’t have to be sorry about the scratches. I know that wasn’t really you.”

“Not about that,” he mumbles.

Then he drifts off into the warmth of sleep in Juno’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> CWs continued:  
> \- "Juno" holds Nureyev at gunpoint, is really cruel to him, and at one point aims to kill him. None of this is real and is just happening in Nureyev's mind due to Dark Matters screw-ery.  
> \- Nureyev lashes out at the real Juno and injures him in a fit of confusion/fear after waking from the simulation.
> 
> Ty for reading!!!! Follow me on twitter @prydonn if you wanna see me constantly yell about Junoverse and writing Junoverse fic.


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